Quanta Magazine is an editorially independent online publication launched by the Simons Foundation in 2012 to enhance public understanding of science. Why Quanta? Albert Einstein called photons ...

A collection of short dispatches from the field of climate microbiology conveys the contributions that single-celled life ...

These phenomena are erratic. They interact at every scale and manifest as weather, from clear sunny days to blustery ...

Earth’s radiation can send some molecules spinning or vibrating, which is what makes them greenhouse gases. This infographic ...

A team of scientists has investigated how Earth’s twin became so inhospitable, and whether the same will happen to our planet ...

Katherine Bourzac is a science journalist based in San Francisco. Her coverage of microbiology, physics, chemistry and the environment has appeared in Nature, Scientific American and MIT ...

Over the past 60 years, scientists have largely succeeded in building a computer model of Earth to see what the future holds.

Building an accurate model of Earth’s climate requires a lot of data. Photography reveals the extreme efforts scientists have ...

A planetary perspective on the relationship between life and energy, and the emergence of a life form whose influence extends ...

Earth’s climate system is famously chaotic, and slight changes to atmospheric conditions can produce wildly different outcomes. At the same time, we know for certain that adding more carbon dioxide to ...